The organic mix that is the Ticats’ pre-2013-season is continuing, still full of moving parts.

The only thing for sure is that the Wynne-less Cats will play at least six — more likely seven or more — regular season games, plus a pre-season match, at the University of Guelph’s Alumni Stadium.

But where the club will conduct training camp and its in-season daily practices remains to be determined.

The inside money had been on Redeemer College, for both situations, but an ear to the ground detects fewer and fewer hoofbeats from that direction, and it appears that McMaster University has trotted back into the picture.

In June, after months of talks, Mac rejected the Cats’ plan to play the majority of their regular-season games at Ron Joyce Stadium, which would have been temporarily, but significantly, expanded by temporary seats. The home games would likely have been front-ended: that is, played in the first half of the schedule before the bulk of students returned for the fall semester.

In the wake of that decision the Cats, who had conducted training camps at Mac since the Bob Young era began in 2004, did not renew that contract.

But sources say that talks between the university and football team have resumed and that the club could not only return to the campus for training camp this June, but might also remain there for practices during the season.

That would, of course, elate Cat Nation and dissipate most of the post-June negative backlash against Mac from a large segment of the city’s gridiron devotees.

The Marauders and Ticats have been the high-profile glue that has helped knit together a formidable local football community that stretches from a very wide minor-football base, through the varsity and junior ranks and into the university and pro programs.

As always during complicated negotiations with looming deadlines, the parties closest to the heart are trying to avoid either confirming or denying that there is fire behind the emerging smoke.

“We’re working away on things,” Ticat president Scott Mitchell said, referring in general only to the pursuit of a practice and training camp home.

But when asked directly about Mac, for either training camp, in-season practices, or some combination of both, he would offer only: “There is really nothing to comment on.”

The CFL schedule is due out soon, perhaps next week — anxious Cat fans are getting edgy about the long wait, and there are recent indications that the release might be delayed until early March — and its arrival should answer whether the Cats will try a regular-season game in London and/or Moncton or elsewhere, or will play them all at Guelph.

But the training camp and practice locale(s) will probably not be determined until after that.

It’s getting very interesting. Again.

CATS CLAUSE: Alert readers are right. In a dumb reference in the Hall of Fame inductees column in this corner, great returner/receiver Chris Williams was credited with being the first pro player to score touchdowns in five different ways. That honour, of course, belonged to Marcus Thigpen.